by Rick Mofina
The clinking of chains and keys signaled Hood’s arrival, the guards delivering him to Cohen, who stood and positioned a chair for Hood. Once they were alone, Cohen said, “How are you doing, Isaiah?”
Hood’s brown hair was flecked with white strands. His tiny black eyes pushed into a ruddy face creased, pitted and scarred, as if a glacier had passed over it. It held the pallor of skin deprived of natural sunlight.
Hood’s eyes searched Cohen’s.
“Any word from the court?”
“Nothing. I am sorry.”
Hood’s chains clinked and knocked as he flattened his hands on the table.
“Lane have her kid yet?”
“Not yet.” Cohen opened a file folder. “Let’s go over a few points. I’ve spoken today with the governor’s office and the office of the attorney general in Helena about seeking relief. Their response is to wait for the outcome with the Supreme Court but they have not closed the door….”
Hood gave part of his attention to the TV news as Cohen began summarizing the strengths of their appeal to the Supreme Court, most of which Hood knew by heart. The sound was off but it was clear from the pictures it was something significant about that big story the guards were talking about, that little girl lost in Glacier National Park.
“…that the Petitioner’s conviction was derived from a constitutionally invalid confession and from the testimony before the Court of a sole witness, being a 13-year-old child…counsel failed in effective cross-examination at trial...mitigating and circumstantial evidence….”
Hood could locate anyone lost in Glacier National Park. It is sunny and warm the last day he sets foot in it, twenty-two years ago. He can hear the girls and smell the fragrance of freshly-laundered clothing before they near the spot where he is sitting. It is at a forest edge near a goat ledge deep in northern Glacier, not far from an abandoned turn-of-the-century trapper’s trail. They are laughing, chasing butterflies.
He is just there.
They stop dead in their tracks and swallow. He has startled them and it makes them laugh nervously.
“Hello,” he says.
The older one glances over her shoulder, as if knowing they should return. Sensing danger. They just stood there. Frozen.
“How about a game?” he says.
The little one giggles.
The older one recognizes him. He sees it in her face: You’re one of the Hoods. Trash. Keep away from us. That look broke his heart. The others in town would never know how much they had hurt him. He was nineteen and never had a friend in his life.
“We’re not supposed to play with you. We should go back,” she says.
“Don’t say that. It hurts. Don’t go. Please. How about a little game?”
“Okay,” the little one says.
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
“What are you going to do?” The little one wants to play.
Hood had no friends in his life.
Suddenly, he has two.
It was CNN reporting the live news conference of the parents of the lost girl. There was an inset picture of her, ten years old. Paige Baker. The anguished mother was talking about her disappearance in front of several dozen microphones.
Hood knew. It’s her.
He stared so intensely at the TV news pictures his knuckles whitened. His hands were gripping the table with such force it creaked and his chains chinked.
“Petitioner’s rights were violated under these articles of the Constitution of the State of Montana and the following Amendments to the Constitution of the United States because…What is it? Isaiah, are you OK!”
Hood’s body began trembling.
Cohen banged on the door.
“Guard!”
Yet Hood’s brain had slipped into a tranquil trancelike state.
That face. The older one. The little one.
The message was coming through now.
Isaiah would not die in this prison.
TWENTY-TWO
FBI Agents encircled Doug and Emily Baker after their news conference near the command center. Bowman was among them.
“Everybody OK?” She placed her hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Doug, these fellas will take you inside to talk to Agent Zander and the other guys. Emily and I will go back now on this flight to wait at the campsite.” Bowman indicated an approaching helicopter.
Doug took Emily quickly into his arms. His worried eyes were searching hers for something--he didn’t know what. They didn’t have the chance to talk privately after Emily talked to police. Was that coincidence? Doug felt something was happening, something deep beneath the surface compounding his anguish and his guilt for having screamed at Paige before she vanished.
Bowman gestured. It was time to go.
Emily pulled Doug’s head to hers. “Be careful,” she said into his ear, then kissed his cheek.
Doug turned from Emily’s embrace and froze.
Less than ten feet away, at the entrance to the command center, Bobby Ropa had been watching them.
The contempt in Ropa’s icy stare chilled Doug, making him uneasy--even more so than when this jerk came upon them arguing on the trail. The way this strange family just stood there spying on them for such a long time before declaring their presence. It was unusual. Now the guy’s face was telegraphing scorn. Disturbing. What if he has something to do with Paige’s disappearance? Doug’s jaw clenched. If this asshole harmed my daughter in any way. Doug swore to God he would--he should just walk up to him and ask what he’s doing here.
“Dad, I just counted the news trucks. Guess how many?” The man’s son, who was about Paige’s age, ran to his father’s side. Noticing the standoff with Doug, the kid stared, then looked away, as if he possessed a secret too risky for him to conceal. Had this family just been questioned by police? What the hell was happening? The father took his kid and walked off.
“Right this way, Doug.” Zander had witnessed the tense moment.
Inside the task force room, Doug finally exhaled, rubbing his face. He agreed to a cup of coffee.
“You know everybody here, Doug, except Inspector Walt Sydowski from San Francisco PD.” Zander set a ceramic mug on the table before Doug.
“San Francisco? I don’t understand why you’re here.”
Zander answered. “It’s basic procedure, in assisting the physical search, that we investigate every link to Paige. That means working with the FBI and local law enforcement in San Francisco, in the remote case her disappearance was premeditated, or involves someone there who followed you here.”
“But we told you she just ran off.”
“That’s right.”
Doug ran a hand through his hair. That other man. “Oh God, you really don’t think there is more to it?”
Zander regarded Doug. “We hope not. While the searchers are doing their job, we are working as fast as we can to eliminate all the terrible possibilities, or immediately act on anything concrete.”
“Well, who was that man who just left? You know he was on the trail the day before Paige got lost. Did you talk to him?”
“Just finished. You know him? Ever see him before the trail?”
Doug shook his head. “Just the one time. What did he tell you?”
“That he and his family came upon your family having a discussion.”
“What else?”
“Doug, can you tell us about everything before Paige got lost? It might help us if we overlooked anything. Take us back to the decision to come here for vacation. Would you do that for us? Then we’ll fly you out to Emily.”
Doug collected his thoughts.
“For the past few years, Emily was having trouble coming to terms with the deaths of her parents. She grew up here. She witnessed her father’s death. He fell from his horse and was stomped to death. Her mother moved her to San Francisco, then abandoned her to relatives before she died in a homeless shelter. It began when Emily was around Paige’s age, so it was coming up on her and she was having a hard t
ime dealing with it. In fact, she refused to discuss it or reveal much of it to me.”
“Was it a source of conflict within the family?”
“Yes, particularly in recent years, as Paige reached the same age. We argued a lot. First in private, then openly in front of Paige.” Doug stopped to grip his coffee mug with both hands, peering into it. “I am ashamed to admit that one argument a few days ago was so loud it forced a neighbor to report it to police. A patrol car came to our house. The officers calmed us down.”
Zander and Sydowski exchanged lightning-fast glances.
“So why come here?”
“Emily had never, ever returned to Montana since leaving with her mother. About a year ago, in San Francisco, at my insistence, she began getting counseling. We learned she was enduring a sort of post-bereavement crisis. Her counselor advised her that the most effective way for Emily to deal with her past was to return and confront it. Lay her ghosts to rest. So we took a vacation here, for her.”
“How did that go?”
“Not so well. Paige did not want to come. So I agreed to smuggle Kobee in as part of the deal. Dogs are forbidden in the backcountry, but that beagle is like a brother to her.” Doug shook his head. His eyes glistened. “Emily was having a rough time with her ghosts and shut me out when I tried to talk to her. We argued. I figured it would be cathartic to get it all out, scream therapy in the mountains. We thought it was private until we discovered that guy’s family was watching us for an abnormally long time. Paige had convinced herself Emily and I were getting a divorce and it was breaking her heart.”
“That was the day before she got lost?”
“Yes. The fallout of our battle carried into the next day. We all needed some space. Emily went off to a cliff by herself. I was chopping firewood and was going to read. Paige and Kobee were alone in her tent; then she came out and tried to, to--”
Tears pooled in Doug’s eyes, which were focused on the last images of his daughter. He rubbed his chin, as if summoning the strength to reveal what happened.
Noting that Doug used his right hand, Zander said, “Doug, it might be better if you tell us. It might help things.”
Doug swallowed.
“Uh, I was angry at Emily, at the whole damn thing, and I was chopping wood, working it off. Paige, she just wanted to talk to me. She came out and I’m just chopping away, angry at the world, and I scream at her to get out of my face and join her mother up the trail on the ridge. Paige knew the way. We had all gone there the previous day a few times for Emily to take family pictures. It was no more than seventy yards or so.”
“Then what happened, Doug?”
“She wouldn’t go. I was upset, chopping, and I hit my hand with my ax, bleeding all over. Looks worse than it is.”
“How’s your hand now?” Zander asked.
“”It’s OK. Like I said, looks worse than it is.”
“You got a white strip around it?”
“Yes,” Doug rotated his hand. “Tore my T-shirt to tend to it.”
“Doug, would you mind showing us the cut?”
Doug looked at them.
“I said it’s not that bad.’
“Please.”
He removed the strip to show a bloodied incision beginning at the knuckle of his right forefinger flowing several inches into his palm.
Zander reached for Doug’s hand, holding it palm out.
“Does it hurt? You want someone to look at it? You could have tendon damage, or need stitches.”
“It’s OK, really.”
“Mind showing how you did it? Demonstrate.”
Doug considered the request while wrapping his hand.
He raised his right hand in a chopping motion, holding his left hand extended. “I was holding the log with my left hand when I swung and cut it, like that.”
Doug brought his ax hand down in one swift arching movement; that image burned, lingering like the intense flash of a crime scene photographer’s camera at a homicide. The room fell silent…until Zander spoke.
“Then what did you do, Doug?”
“I scream at Paige, worse than I ever have at any football player. I terrified her. I was bleeding and yelling. I chased her off with Kobee. I was so angry. Not at her. I chased her off. I am so sorry.”
“Why didn’t you go after her?”
“I was white hot, not thinking clearly. I tended to my wound and thought she would be better off with her mother. A couple of hours passed with me thinking Paige was with Emily, but then Emily returned alone. She thought Paige was with me. That’s when we realized what had happened. We rushed to the trail, took opposite sides, searching for her, calling for her and Kobee until it got dark. The next day, just before dawn, I hiked out for help.”
Doug cradled his temple in his right hand, staring down at the table.
No one in the room voiced a word.
Doug sighed, exhaustion and anguish overwhelming him. His tears splashed on the table; his left hand relaxed from coffee mug and the strip slipped, revealing that horrible gash.
Zander, Sydowski, and Thornton each evaluated what they had witnessed: a father consumed by the anguish of a faultless tragedy, or the calculated display of a cold-blooded killer.
FBI agents had secretly searched the Bakers’ campsite.
They had not found Doug’s ax.
TWENTY-THREE
Inspector Linda Turgeon waited at her desk in Room 450, the Homicide Detail of the San Francisco Police Department in the Hall of Justice on Bryant checking her watch. Where are they?
Turgeon could almost hear the second hand ticking down on Paige Baker as she studied the Chronicle, then the San Francisco Star, whose headline blared: S.F. GIRL MISSING IN ROCKIES. Is she still alive? Wilson went to the faces of Paige’s father and mother, which accompanied the front-page article. A horrible tragedy, or something worse?
Molly Wilson from the Star was, like the other local reporters, all over her, pumping for data. Wilson was one of the best diggers. She and Tom Reed produced a pretty good piece in the Star. Sooner or later, the lid was going to come off this thing. Turgeon and the press were tugging at threads, each one leading to another that would bring them closer to the truth.
Her own brass and the FBI were demanding more instant information, information they did not yet possess, to be sent to Montana. It was a whirlwind of bureaucratic hysteria.
Sitting here waiting on Jones and Pace, the two officers from the Richmond District who took the stale domestic call to the Bakers’ home, she was getting a little ticked. They were late.
Flipping through her notebook, the scores of appointments, of people she needed to contact, Turgeon was relieved her boss, Lieutenant Leo Gonzales, had assigned more bodies to help with the overwhelming file. Where are Jones and Pace? For a moment, Turgeon found comfort in the fragrance of the dozen peaches-and-cream roses her boyfriend had sent to her. A thank-you for their reunion date. HERE’S TO POSSIBILITIES was printed on his card. Turgeon smiled.
Back to work, Inspector.
Turgeon reviewed the all she had so far on the Baker call. Dispatch tape and CAD records. All she needed were the unit log notes and the recollections of the responding officers.
Turgeon could not dismiss the growing feeling something was not right in the lives of Doug and Emily Baker. She was anxious to hear from Willa Meyers, Emily’s aunt. Hopefully, the aunt could elaborate on the information that had come from Kurt Sikes.
The athletic-looking history teacher at Beecher Lowe High, where Doug taught and coached the football team, was deeply concerned for the Bakers. After Turgeon sidestepped his pressing her to arrange for players and students to go to Montana to aid the search in some sort of “go, team, go” demo of school pride, Sikes gave her something useful.
“Well, not long ago, Doug told me how Emily was driving him out of his mind.”
“How so?”
“Well”--Sikes dropped his voice to a confidential tone--“Doug said she was under psychologi
cal counseling for some past problem she was having trouble dealing with, and it was creating tension at home because Emily would not discuss it with him.”
“What was the past problem?”
“I never found out because Doug only mentioned it that one time. We were having a beer at my place, watching a ball game. He seemed lost, almost haunted by it. He never talked about it again and I never asked him. Now this happens with Paige. Man, we got to find her. Doug and Emily have got to be hurting bad.”
Turgeon closed her notebook and bit her bottom lip. She should go back to Sikes.
“Inspector Turgeon?”
Two uniformed officers, Jones and Pace, introduced themselves. Turgeon collected her file.
“We’ll go to an interview room. You guys want a coffee?”
Both shook their heads. Hard faces. She should not have been surprised by the attitude. Turgeon had done a quick check on them. Pace was six feet four inches, a ceiling-scraping bodybuilder, an eleven-year veteran you wanted to keep happy and on your side.
Jones had sixteen years on the street. Her cynicism manifested itself in the taut lines around her eyes, her gray-streaked hair and her black belt in karate.
They were hardened warriors behind the shield. Between them, they had four citizens’ complaints, all unsupported. Fourteen citations: rescuing attempted suicides, thwarting an armored car heist in progress, saving a baby in a burning building, disarming a gun-toting hostage-taker. Like most street cops who had a nanosecond to make life-and-death decisions, and years to be judged on them, they resented being second-guessed. Being defensive was an auto-reflexive action.
Their leather utility belts squeaked and their Kevlar vests pushed against their uniformed shirts as they scraped chairs out from the table and occupied them.
Pace circled his index fingers in tandem, inquiring if Turgeon was taping them.
“This is not being recorded.”
“We were late because we talked to our rep.”
“Why?”
“In case you guys are coming after us, for missing something on that call with that family,” Pace said.